When I arrive in the cluster, Joyce, the team supervisor, is assigning households to interviewers Mercy, Cybil, and Naa. They are seated outside a shop—tablets out to receive their assignments over Bluetooth—while in a nearby household, their colleague Vera interviews a respondent as part of the 2017 Ghana Maternal Health Survey (GMHS). After Vera finishes with her interview, they will be moving onto the next cluster. Interviewers often make callbacks, setting up a time that is convenient for the respondent and returning to the household. They will be back here tomorrow.

We walk over to the household where Vera is conducting an interview. Vera asks the respondent if it’s okay for me to observe the interview, and she agrees. The respondent is making banku, stirring a steaming pot while she answers the questions. Her young son wanders in and out of the kitchen. When we get to the more sensitive questions in the questionnaire, Vera leans in, speaking softly to put the respondent at ease. At the end of the interview, Vera thanks her, and we head back to the car.

Mercy has the hand-drawn map of the next cluster; she studies it to find the landmarks that will help them identify the boundaries. After a brief car ride, we get out and walk, using the household listing map to make sure we are in the right place. Now I’m tagging along with Naa as she finds her first assigned household. She walks up, introduces herself and the survey, and asks for the head of household.

Naa and I visit three different households over the course of the afternoon. At one, the head of household calls her daughter on her mobile phone to ask her to come home and participate in the survey. The respondent arrives, and I’m in awe. I’m not sure I’d want to go to the trouble of cutting errands short to participate in a survey. It’s even more striking that this respondent is not unique in this regard; The DHS Program would not exist without all the respondents who generously agree to give us their time and attention.

I came to visit the team with Emmanuel, a member of the Ghana Statistical Service’s (GSS) Field Operations and Logistics Unit. As the afternoon comes to an end, he says he needs to head back to the GSS head office. As a man, he cannot observe individual interviews due to the sensitive nature of some of the questions, so he spent most of the afternoon by the car after checking in with Joyce and the interviewers and handing over additional paper questionnaires. The 2017 GMHS includes verbal autopsies – extensive questions about the circumstances of each death of a woman age 12-49 that took place in the past 5 years – and those interviews use paper questionnaires. In contrast, the household and woman’s questionnaires are completed using the tablets. Emmanuel and I head back, but the work continues into the evening for Joyce, Vera, Naa, Mercy, and Cybil.

To learn more about the 2017 Ghana Maternal Health Survey, watch the Key Findings video below:

Many DHS countries have completed 3, 4, or 5 surveys, and look forward to their next DHS to examine trends and assess progress. But the 2015-16 Myanmar Demographic and Health Survey (MDHS) was the first DHS conducted, providing, for the first time ever, internationally comparable and nationally representative DHS data. For Myanmar, this is an especially meaningful achievement, as some areas of Myanmar have previously been too insecure for inclusion in national surveys.

The Myanmar DHS team, including the Ministry of Health and Sports, USAID/Burma, the 3MDG Fund, and ICF staff decided at the beginning of the survey process to prioritize inclusion of all people in Myanmar. This meant that many extra efforts were taken to collect data in even the hardest-to-reach areas, including clusters that had previously been unreachable by survey programs due to insecurity and violence. Deliberate efforts were made to hire interviewers from all regions and states and to ensure that interviewers could speak minority languages. In one case, data collection teams traveled to a selected cluster in ambulances to ensure fieldworker safety. Extensive advocacy efforts took place before the survey teams arrived at sensitive locations to make certain that communities were informed about the survey and felt comfortable participating. Ultimately, 98% of selected households participated in the MDHS. You can read more about sampling here.

With the 2015-16 MDHS, Myanmar joins the DHS club with nationally representative, transparent, and freely available data for decision makers in Myanmar and worldwide. During the national seminar releasing the MDHS data, the Minister of Health urged 150 eager audience members,

“I do not want this survey to be on a shelf… it must be on the desk of program managers and state and regional health directors”.

The Ministry of Health and Sports has been working towards this goal, holding dissemination workshops in all 15 states and regions in May.

As someone who has been with The DHS Program for 13 years and helped to support dozens of surveys, the release of a new survey final report never gets old. But in Myanmar, the survey signifies more than new data. It represents a new era in Myanmar where information is shared, all people are included, and representative data are used to inform decision making.

All of us at The DHS Program offer our congratulations to the Myanmar Ministry of Health and Sports. Your hard work and dedication over the last two years have paid off. We look forward to working with you again. And next time we can talk about trends.

Representatives of the Myanmar Ministry of Health and Sports, USAID, the 3MDG Fund, and other key stakeholders share the results of the 2015-16 Myanmar DHS on March 23, 2017, in Nay Pyi Taw.

In April 2016, The DHS Programwelcomed visitors from Tchad. This post is one in a series of interviews with visitors to DHS headquarters. Don’t read French? You can use the translate feature at the top of the page!

Working in collaboration, two Afghan government organizations– the Central Statistics Organization and the Ministry of Public Health (MOPH) – conducted Afghanistan’s first Demographic and Health Survey (AfDHS). “This in itself is an enormous milestone,” said Larry Sampler, Assistant to the Administrator for the Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs at USAID during a panel discussion at the Wilson Center, “A Good Diagnosis for Afghanistan: Strengthening the Health Sector.” Sampler, joined by the Afghanistan Minister of Public Health, Dr. Ferozuddin Feroz; Sayed Alam Shinwari, President of the Afghan Medical Professionals Association of America; and Michael Kugelman, Senior Associate for South Asia at The Wilson Center highlighted the implications of the Afghan government’s efforts to improve maternal and child health as demonstrated in the newly released 2015 AfDHS Key Indicators Report (KIR).

Of particular interest to both the MOPH and USAID, AfDHS results show progress in reducing childhood mortality. Currently, about 1 in 20 children does not survive until their 5th birthday in Afghanistan. The majority of these childhood deaths occur during the first year of life. Compared to earlier time periods, both infant and under-five mortality have declined, suggesting that child health interventions are making a difference. Dr. Feroz explains, “The DHS survey shows that there is substantial improvement in maternal health and child health. This progress has been made through high-level commitments, a productive work environment with development partners as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and local NGOs, scaling up of cost effective and lifesaving interventions across the country, training of midwives, as well as attention to equity and those living in remote areas.”

“The DHS survey demonstrates how far the Afghan public health sector has come and also how far it has to go,” stated Larry Sampler. What are the challenges of Afghanistan’s health sector? “Afghanistan still faces instability and insecurity, poverty, unemployment, the few number of midwives or health staff across the country,” explains Dr. Feroz. But in spite of these challenges, the Afghan MOPH is developing a national strategy for the next five years. “We will use this recent survey as a baseline to measure progress – to increase access to remote areas, improve the quality of services, introduce cost-effective interventions, and focus on equity issues.”

Dr. Fred Arnold (left) of The DHS Program with Dr. Ferozuddin Feroz, Afghanistan Minister of Public Health

The survey covered topics including fertility and family planning, maternal and child health, childhood and maternal mortality, nutrition, malaria, HIV knowledge, and other health issues. The KIR is a short report of key indicators from the 2015 AfDHS that is meant to provide important data in a timely fashion to program managers and policy makers. Additional indicators such as the maternal mortality ratio will be included in the AfDHS Final Report, scheduled for release in late 2016.

The 2015 Afghanistan Demographic and Health Survey (2015 AfDHS) was implemented by the Central Statistics Organization and the Ministry of Public Health from June 15, 2015, to February 23, 2016. The funding for the AfDHS was provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). ICF International provided technical assistance through The DHS Program, a USAID-funded project providing support and technical assistance in the implementation of population and health surveys in countries worldwide.

From left to right: Joanna Lowell of The DHS Program, Mr. Leutsoa Matsoso and Motsoanku Grace ‘Mefane of the Ministry of Health, Michelle Surdyk of USAID, Anna Masheane-Moseneke and Mahlape Ramoseme of the Ministry of Health

Days like today are why I love my job. “Thematic data use workshops are the most important part of the survey,” Fatou CAMARA, director of the Senegal Continuous Survey at l’Agence Nationale de la Statistique et la Démographie (ANSD), tells me over dinner. “They’re also my favorite,” she adds. I couldn’t agree more. It’s always rewarding to watch people engage directly with data from The DHS Program surveys, but even more so when it’s the women and men who manage a country’s health programs.

Representatives from ANSD, the Ministry of Health and Social Action, and USAID officially open the thematic workshop.

The topics for the thematic workshop are maternal health, child health, and nutrition. Regional medical coordinators, reproductive health coordinators, and nutrition supervisors have come from all 14 of Senegal’s regions to participate. They are joined by the national maternal health, child survival, and nutrition program directors.

The morning is packed with introductions and presentations on the relevant results from the Senegal Continuous Survey. Data is collected each year in Senegal and the results are designed to guide program planning, monitoring, and evaluation. The Senegal Continuous Survey has two parts: 1) the Continuous DHS, which collects data on households, women, men, and children; and 2) the Continuous SPA, which collects data on health facilities, health care providers, and clients receiving health care.

Participants review the dissemination materials for the Continuous Survey.

Questions and comments during the discussion following the presentations are intriguing. “We trained our health care providers on the integrated management of childhood illness, but the [survey] results show that they aren’t putting this into practice during sick child consultations.” “Almost a quarter of births still occur at home instead of health facilities, though the availability of delivery services is high. We need to increase our communication efforts with women.” Continuous SPA coordinator, Dr Ibou GUISSE, and the director of field operations for the Continuous DHS, Mabeye DIOP, do an excellent job of providing detailed answers and explanations.

The afternoon begins with an activity on how to read and understand tables from the Continuous Survey. Participants are guided step-by-step, from reading the title and subtitle to finding the totals in the table. Over lunch, a participant tells me that the activity is useful, “Previously, I sometimes struggled to make sense of the tables. Now I’m more confident.”

Participants identify priority actions from their regional strategic plans during group work.

The rest of the day is dedicated to group work. Each region must identify two priority actions from their regional strategic health plans that will be completed in the six months after the workshop. They must also indicate specific results from the Continuous Survey that support the actions they have chosen. Finally, they must create an action plan for these priority actions, including next steps and deadlines. The groups are so engrossed in the group work that they continue well past 6 PM. Tomorrow, they will present their priority actions, supporting data, and action plans. I can hardly wait see to see the data in action!

In 2012 when the Social Media for Global Health and Development working group started, many people were searching for some guidance on how to do social media for global health. The group started small with just a few interested organizations and has since grown to over 500 around the world. The need for social media technical assistance has increased and was the inspiration for the development of a new Global Health eLearning Center course, Social Media for Global Health and Development. The course provides tips and resources for using social media in one free and easy-to-use place.

The course provides an introduction to social media and how it can be used in global health and development. It gives a rationale for why social media is important with examples from organizations such as DefeatDD, Maternal and Child Survival Program, and the USAID | Deliver Project. The course also provides an overview of the top global platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and more. Global health and development professionals can learn how to integrate social media within their programs with a step-by-step guide on creating a strategy and measuring social media.

The course targets beginner to intermediate social media users. There are helpful hints, case studies, and links to more information so learners can start their social media and do it effectively. Register today at the Global Health eLearning Center to begin the two hour course.

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